In this series, I’ll build a License Plate Recognition (LPR) engine step by step in C++. The goal is not only to recognize license plates but also to understand the internal mechanics behind image processing and recognition systems.

In this first part we will:

Load an image using OpenCV

Convert the image into grayscale

Introduce the core data structures used by the recognition engine

Future parts will cover:

Image preprocessing

Noise reduction

Edge detection

Plate localization

Character segmentation

Character recognition

Performance optimization

Loading an image

The first step of any vision system is acquiring image data.

We read the image path from command-line arguments:

#include <iostream> #include "opencv2/opencv.hpp" #include "RecogEngine.h" int main ( int argc , char * argv []) { if ( argc < 2 ) { std :: cout << "Usage: app.exe <image_path> \n " ; return - 1 ; }

const char * imagePath = argv [ 1 ];

cv :: Mat image = cv :: imread ( imagePath );

if ( image .…